It also holds a majority of shares in the Seven Up company and Federal Data Corporation, supplier of air traffic control surveillance systems to the US Federal Aviation Authority. The 12 billion dollar company has recently signed contracts with United Defense Industries to equip the Turkish and Saudi Arabian armies with aviation Defense systems.
Top of the meeting’s agenda is expected to be the company’s involvement in the rebuilding of Baghdad’s infrastructure after the cessation of current hostilities. Along with several other US companies, the Carlyle Group is expected to be awarded a billion dollar contract by the US Government to help in the redevelopment of airfields and urban areas destroyed by Coalition aerial bombardments. (Full Story)
And, talk about being in on the ground floor of the "War on Terror:" On September 11, 2001, the day two planes crashed into the World Trade Center, the Carlyle Group was hosting an investors conference at the nearby Ritz-Carlton, a conference attended by none other than Osama bin Laden's brother. George H. Bush attended the conference the day before and had met personally with the bin Laden kin.
No, I'm not siding with the 9/11 conspiracy folks. I still think they're nuts. I am simply making the point that when it, if it's big, or promises to be big, the Carlyle Group makes sure it has an arm lock on good hunk of the action.
Former Secretary of State James Baker is (of course) a member of Carlyle's inner circle and he bristles at the notion that the company somehow manipulates world events.
"I say that's bullshit, and you can print it!" Baker snapped at a reporter. "Somebody would say, 'well, you had one of the bin Laden brothers as an investor.' Well, that's exactly right," he says, adding that the bin Ladens are one of the wealthiest families in the Middle East and have disowned Osama.
(Duh Alert: After 9/11 Rubenstein announced he had returned the bin Ladens' $2 million investment.)
Rubenstein has stopped trying to deny the benefits of his company's toady hyper-connectedness: "We've actually replaced the Trilateral Commission" as the darling of conspiracy theorists," Rubenstein jokes.
So there we are. The new owner of one of the most important documents in mankind's march towards democracy has been purchased by Carlyle co-founder David Rubenstein. His new acquisition will be housed and conserved, at taxpayer expense, at the National Archives.
The value of Rubensteins copy of the Magna Carta is sure to continue to rise, even as the paradigm-shattering rights it was the first to enshrine into law slip, one by one, from our lives today.
Which brings me to the next story that caught my interest:
Each year since 1997, the US-based Electronic Privacy Information Center and the UK-based Privacy International have undertaken what has now become the most comprehensive survey of global privacy ever published. The Privacy & Human Rights Report surveys developments in 70 countries, assessing the state of surveillance and privacy protection.
The most recent report published in 2007, available at http://www.privacyinternational.org/phr, is probably the most comprehensive single volume report published in the human rights field. The report runs over 1,100 pages and includes 6,000 footnotes. More than 200 experts from around the world have provided materials and commentary. The participants range from eminent privacy scholars to high-level officials charged with safeguarding constitutional freedoms in their countries. Academics, human rights advocates, journalists and researchers provided reports, insight, documents and advice. In 2006 Privacy International took the decision to use this annual report as the basis for a ranking assessment of the state of privacy in all EU countries together with eleven non-EU benchmark countries. Funding for the project was provided by the Open Society Institute (OSI) and the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust. Follow this link for more details of last year's results.
The intention behind this project is two-fold. First, we hope to recognize countries in which privacy protection and respect for privacy is nurtured. This is done in the hope that others can learn from their example. Second we intend to identify countries in which governments and privacy regulators have failed to create a healthy privacy environment. The aim is not to humiliate the worst ranking nations, but to demonstrate that it is possible to maintain a healthy respect for privacy within a secure and fully functional democracy.
This study and the accompanying ranking chart measure the extent of surveillance and privacy. They do not intend to comprehensively reflect the state of democracy or the full extent of legal or parliamentary health or dysfunction in these countries (though the two conditions are frequently linked). The aim of this study is to present an assessment of the extent of information disclosure, surveillance, data exploitation and the general state of information privacy.
Stephen Pizzo has been published everywhere from The New York Times to Mother Jones magazine. His book, Inside Job: The Looting of America's Savings and Loans, was nominated for a Pulitzer.
Knowing the predilections of these so-pious folk, I would imagine he has bought it as apparently-expensive toilet paper to sanitize his nether end.
However, knowing these vermin for what they really are, the loan guarantee mechanism which will have amassed the fiction with which he 'bought' it in reality costs nothing. So his sanitizing expression of contempt for what the rest of us hold semi-sacred will really be nothing more than a cheap trick, like the rest of the fraud of their 'finance' which gives them their unwanted and unwonted control of the world.
Off with their heads! - But just don't wait.
by
amazin (31 articles, 0 quicklinks, 10 diaries, 377 comments)
on Thursday, January 3, 2008 at 7:09:09 AM
